Has the embargo broken yet?

It breaks on the 13th but Thompsoncory saw a screening of it last night.

Hopefully its not fucked up. I think if it gets less than an 86% (worse than Sweeney Todd, considering Into the Woods is a superior show) is the benchmark for disappointment. But it will need a score in the high nineties for Oscar consideration in categories outside of makeup and hair and art direction.

This was really great and from what I understand didn't stray too far from the original source material so I have no doubt it will please fans. It's pretty dark for a big Disney Christmas release. It's easily one of the year's most entertaining and visually stunning movies. From a technical perspective it's pretty flawless and really sweeps you up into this world that the characters are inhabiting. Rob Marshall does a strong job directing, a welcome change from the disappointments of Nine and the last Pirates film. The entire ensemble is great. The standouts were Chris Pine (who in my opinion stole the movie - his big number was hilarious), Meryl Streep (who delivers what is probably her strongest performance in years, IMO) and Emily Blunt (charming as ever and where the movie finds its heart - her big song near the end was another highlight). All three should be in the awards conversation. Anna Kendrick was really good and her main song was a well-staged sequence though I think that the character felt a little underdeveloped. I LOVED Christine Baranski, Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard - their short scenes were hilarious and I almost wish there was more of them. James Corden is a more than capable leading man and shares a believable chemistry with Blunt. The younger actors are both decent but Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) annoyed me as a character. Johnny Depp is literally in the movie for two minutes near the beginning - his song is fine though. It's an interesting twist on the fairytale genre and there are some really sensational moments - I definitely plan on seeing it again. A-

So you like everything but Red Riding Hood? Cinderella's underdevelopment is an issue in the show, though definitely so it doesn't surprise me here.

INTO THE WOODS

I have not seen the musical but this adaptation of it was very fun. I enjoyed immensely. The singing was wonderful, the actors were all good and I liked the plot and how they spun the stories together. My favorite performance was either from Streep or Blunt. It was nice to see the boy from Les Mis a couple years older in the role as Jack. The girl who played LRRH was good as well. A couple things that didn't quite work was Depp's role. His song was fine but I think he was distracting in the role. The other issue was it felt like they didn't spend alot of money on the picture. There is not a lot of visual effects in here. They probably spent most of that budget on Streep when she'd pop in and out of scenes. Overall, it was fun and I enjoyed the music which is the most important thing to get right and then the acting. I'm definitely going to purchase the soundtrack.

Grade - A

Glad you liked it! Ok, I'll stop quoting every positive review.

Of the five leaked reviews I have seen, two were in love, and three thought it was good, not great.
First official review on RT loves it, but thinks the story and look are better than the music.
No negatives so far.

What a remarkable movie. Into the Woods has never been a huge Broadway favorite of mine, though I have always enjoyed it, as well as the music. Thankfully, the movie is as great as a movie adaptation of it could possibly be. Rob Marshall shows that Nice was just a fluke (thank god) and he has it in him to make a beautiful, moving musical. I teared up quite a few times. The cast is fantastic with Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Chris Pine deserving of all of the praise they have received. Meryl can obviously do no wrong (and holy hell does she have a fierce singing voice, "Last Midnight" will blow you away and "Stay with Me" will break your heart). Blunt gives a fully realized, complex performance and Pine steals every scene he is in. The rest of the cast is very good, Anna Kendrick has a beautiful singing voice and Lilla Crawford is adorable as Little Red. Johnny Depp is irrelevant to the film for the most part but he was fine. There were a few "issues" I had if I really wanted to nitpick, the filming of "I Know Things Now" to be one of the major ones but overall, it is a magical, beautiful, thought provoking and tale that everyone can relate to. Run to this on Christmas, you shall not be disappointed.

A

Why do you think critics are hating so much on the end of the movie?

I'm pretty sure the musical also received mixed reviews.

I looked for reviews of the musical, but I can't find any professional ones. Just audience reviews. Wikipedia just has the awards it won or was nominated for.

In fairy tales, the forest is often a dangerous and deviant space populated with symbolic highwaymen, witches, wolves, and other disruptions of purity. The new Disney film Into the Woods (adapted from a beloved Broadway musical of which I have almost no knowledge) aims to explore this concept by blending various bedtime-story icons, such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Red Riding Hood and her Wolf. However, in my minority opinion, it is entirely inert and a shameful failure. I despise this film. It bored me to tears, and its pretentious gestures toward "deconstructing" fairy tales to reveal the inner admonishments and warnings are obvious and underdeveloped at best. I can only praise it on three counts. Chris Pine delivers a hilarious and refreshing performance, nicely lampooning the cartoon brawn and dashing pomp of Prince Charming archetypes. Emily Blunt is also fine; her character is a mite bland and retrograde, but Blunt plays her with characteristic poise and conviction. And there is a single fantastic song, "Agony," featuring the aforementioned Pine as he tears open his shirt to reveal his chiseled chest and falls to his knees to convey the depth of his romantic longing for Cinderella.

Sondheim devotees can crucify me, but I did not find any of the other songs memorable or even particularly tuneful. Point a gun at my head, and I could not recite a lyric or whistle the melody from any of them a few hours after watching the film. Many of the actors seem uncomfortable in their roles or at least unsure how to play them, broadly drawn as they are. Meryl Streep will receive an obligatory Academy Award nomination for her camp turn as a maternal witch, but her scenery-devouring theatrics are unspectacular. There is no sense she is having quantifiable fun or pushing herself as a performer. It is just a seasoned pro loudly overacting in even louder wigs. And it is hard to imagine a key performance in a major motion picture duller than MacKenzie Mauzy's personality-free turn as the witch's (stolen at birth) "daughter," the long-long-haired Rapunzel. Anna Kendrick also flounders as a muted, indistinct Cinderella.

Director Rob Marshall does an awful job tying the various fairy-tale references and themes together. There is never a sense this is a single picture depicting a single world nor is there substantial momentum. The film registers as an overlong, lopsided swarm of halfhearted and unfinished vignettes. There is also a dearth of visual imagination on Marshall's part. This project invites pop, spectacle, and a playful visual eye, but he proves a wan non-stylist at every turn. Much of the action unfolds on the same half acre of studio-lot woodland. One ongoing subplot involves Cinderella thrice fleeing the prince's ball in fear he will realize her low social standing and fall out of love, but never once does Marshall's camera dare enter the ball itself. He is satisfied filming the steps again and again. Nor are we treated to even a single tantalizing glimpse of the land of the giants. Just closeups of those magic beans.

F

The only character in Into the Woods I felt sympathy for was the female giant. She deserved to visit her bone-crushing vengeance upon the dirty thief Jack.

This is a film so awful, I became claustrophobic in the theatre. A slow drip of a poison called tedium. "All right, all right, what is this bullshit, four hours long? Last Midnight, eh, Meryl? Promise?"

Were we meant to care even one bit if the baker's wife has a child? Are we meant to be invested one bit in Jack and his mother and the cow?

And the whole, "Oh, see, we are cutely deconstructing happily-ever-after expectations" angle is so toothless and bland.

Yeah... the movie is a clusterfuck to say the least. I'm assuming this material works better as a play as the story is all over the place and it doesn't really hit any emotional beats nor interesting plot points. Very disappointed with this.

I am heartened, honestly, to read your response considering there is a great deal of love for this film online. I just sat there mystified, feeling nothing but annoyance. I just could. not. bring. myself. to. give. a. shit. Regarding anything or anyone. And considering the material, it is honestly not much of a visual experience, either. A few nice shots and costumes, but nothing much to drool over.

yeah, had I seen this in advanced I would've thought it'd be another critically panned Rob Marshall film for sure, like Nine.

David vs. zwackerm - bring it on!

Why would I fight with David? People are entitled to their opinions. You can tell by looking at its RT page people will be very divided on it. I haven't seen it yet, but maybe it really is that poorly executed.

An F is a bit much though.

zwackermian

I may be biased as a fan of the stage show, but this film certainly exceeded my expectations. After hearing all the reviews saying the end fell apart, I was glad to see that it was essentially the same as in the stage show. I thought it flowed very well from Act One into Act Two. I was actually fearful for the movie because they spent so much time on Act One, I feared Act Two would suffer. But they hit all of the essential beats, and there were even many nods to the fans where they could not fit an entire scene. I really appreciated the Ever After and No More Instrumentals during their respective streamlined scenes that made them almost as good. But the film really worked without them. Act Two has all of the best songs, and they are all there, masterfully sung by Hollywood and Broadway's greatest.

The performances here were very good as well. Many have remarked about Streep's strong performance, and I agree she is probably one of the best people to inhabit the Witch role. But my favorite performance was that of Emily Blunt. I just found her Baker's Wife so raw and funny. She really gave Joanna Gleeson a run for her money. Really everyone does a good job. Little Red Riding Hood was another standout for me; I watched the Sound of Music on ABC over the weekend and it struck me that none of the kids in it were good singers. They were cast for cuteness. Little Red can actually sing. The kid who played Jack was technically good, but I didn't like his accent and there is just something about the look he always has in his eyes that makes him look shifty. All of the actors really well enunciated the words of the songs; for instance, when I was in my production of Into the Woods, the girl we had play Cinderella was wonderful, but when she did "On the Steps of the Palace" I was just like "Hurry up with your damn song so we can get to the end. But when Anna Kendrick did it, I really listened to all of the words and got a real feel for her as a character. Same for "Giants in the Sky" and all of the songs they kept in that were meant to break the fourth wall to the audience.

Unfortunately, that could not be done for all of such numbers, and the midnights and Act 1 finale had to go. I Know Things Now worked pretty well sung to the Baker, but "Giants in the Sky" and On the Steps of the Palace kind of felt like they interrupted the flow of the film. They were essential for character development, but that is one of the limitations of film

Visually, the film was breathtaking. If the film doesn't win Production Design and Costume Design at the Oscars, its a real injustice. Rob Marshall also did a fine job directing here. Unlike in Chicago (which I also like, despite being heavily flawed), he does things that cannot be done on stage and really makes the most of his budget and film ability.

This is my favorite film of the year, and the last couple years, probably since Harry Potter ended.
A+

You don't say.

The baker and Rapunzel are siblings, right? Do they even have a meaningful scene together? He seems annoyed the curse on his father is denying him a baby, but rather unfazed by the revelation the creepy town witch is holding his hitherto-unknown-to-him sister prisoner.

The baker never learns his wife cheated on him either.

The witch is a powerful magical being, and Rapunzel was her payment for the parents thievery and the curse that got put upon the Witch. She is also a grown woman now and can take care of herself. I'm sure that reuniting with his long lost sister took second priority to he baker with the fact the curse upon his house only being able to be broken in the next three days for another hundred years. He also has no idea where she is.

Do you not know the story of Rapunzel? The witch treats Rapunzel like her own daughter and raises her as her own. She is not even put in the tower until she is twelve years old. She is not being kept prisoner. The Witch truly loves her and is devastated when she leaves in the film and dies in the play. This is the whole point of "Witch's Lament."

From Comingsoon.net

CS: Was there supposed to be some sort of resolution between Rapunzel and the Baker since that’s meant to be his sister?

Marshall: No, you know what? James Lapine and I spoke about that. They don’t do it on stage, and James said, “We tried so many different versions of how to connect the dots,” he said, “it was one too many dots to connect.” He said, “It’s too complicated.” So, we didn’t do it on stage, and he said, “I don’t think we should do it in the film.”